I can describe our travels in Tripura in two words - We sweated. Oh, you want more than that - We sweated, A Lot.

Of course, you guys want more that. Tripura has been a complete change from Meghalaya - the weather, dominant culture, everything here has been very different. The first sentence gave you a fair indication of how the weather here is - it’s humid, very humid. And for both of us, it’s been very hard to cope here. We’re used to the dry heat of Hyderabad and humidity is just unbearable. Anyway, enough about the weather. There are other things different about Tripura too. There are a lot of Bengalis here – it doesn’t feel like we are in the north east at all! That was quite a surprise for us. Apparently, there are a lot of people who crossed over (illegally) from the Bangladesh border and settled down here. The numbers have come down after the Indian army built a fence at the border. Another contrasting feature of Tripura is that the elevation above sea level is very less and the region is mostly flat (there are some hilly places in north Tripura). However, there still are lots of trees everywhere and lots of lakes around. Meaning nice views wherever you go.

Our first stop on reaching Agartala (the state capital) was G.B Bazar where our host lives. Got out of our stinking clothes and cleaned up after our marathon bus ride. It was already afternoon, so we didn’t intend to do much that day. Went to the Ujjayanta palace in the evening and whiled our evening away. It has been some time since I sat in a park in peace and saw people coming just to spend an evening there – instead of running, walking, etc – reminded me of my childhood days actually. This former palace now houses the Tripura state assembly too, so the entrance is restricted till evening 5pm. Unfortunately, the building was being renovated at the time we visited and so wasn’t a great sight to see. Inder still managed to get a great shot of the palace link.

We had big plans for our second day in Agartala – we would try to cover the Neermahal palace, Tripura Sundari temple, Kamala sagar lake and the Sipahijala wildlife sanctuary. All these places were closer than 55km from Agartala, but with our budget constraints, we had to take public transport and that takes a lot of time.

We first went to Neermahal – a palace in the midst of a lake. You reach the lake after a short walk from a town called Melaghar. The walk was enchanting – just 10m from a busy roadway, the street transformed into an idyllic village scene with palm and coconut trees, bamboo fences and paddy spread on the road. The local fishermen’s society operates a boat service to the palace but they needed 10 passengers to take the boat out. While we were waiting for other tourists to arrive, we made small talk with a soldier from CRPF whose team had come here for an outing. There a lot of birds resting on the water hyacinth on the short boat ride, although our lack of any ornithological intelligence meant all we could tell was the colors of the birds. The palace itself isn’t much to speak about – it is empty and not maintained in a great shape. Our next destination was the Kali or Tripura Sundari temple near Udaipur. This temple is one of the 51 shakti pithas and the idol here was installed in 1501. Since it was a Sunday, there was an animal sacrifice ritual going on as well. The sudden rain (which provided us relief from the sweltering heat) did not dampen the spirit of devotees in the temple at all! After spending a little while in the temple, we proceeded to Udaipur bus stand so that we could go to our most anticipated destination – Kamala sagar lake. This is an artificial lake, right on the Indian border with Bangladesh. To get to the lake, we had to first get down at the highway and take another transport to the lake. As with all of our travels in Tripura, this small journey was more beautiful than the destination itself. It was the first time either of us had visited any of India’s borders, living in the South of India means we’re quite far from the land borders. It was pretty exciting to finally be at one, but also funny that borders are such insignificant places – all you have is a fence and some soldiers. Well, borders are built by men, what else would you expect?

One wing of Neermahal palace

You have row boats too at Neermahal

The Tripura Sundari temple, Udaipur

It was already dark and we did not have any more time to visit the Sipahijala wildlife sanctuary that day. Instead, we put it on our schedule for the next day and spent our entire day lazing in the canteen there. The wildlife sanctuary is huge - the distance from the gate to the zoo, canteen, deer park and other attractions is about 5km! Needless to say, taking an auto till there was going to blow a big hole in our budget and so we walked the entire distance in the sun.

Dancing elephants in the sanctuary

The next day, it was time to say goodbye to Agartala. We thanked our host and started on our to Unakoti, which is famous for its rock cut sculptures. Getting there wasn’t easy – it meant we had to take a passenger train to Kumarghat, take a shared transport to Kailasher and then engage a taxi to Unakoti (which totally blew our budget for the day!). The sculptures were really beautiful – and to think that somebody would engrave them in such a difficult location – on the rocks in a valley – added to their mystique. Apparently the number of sculptures there is one less than one crore (10 million) and hence the name Unakoti (koti = crore).

The valleys at Unakoti

Two stage waterfall - if there is water. Unakoti

Since we had planned to get to Aizawl, Mizoram next we went on to Dharmanagar from Unakoti where we waited a couple of hours for the passenger train which would take us to Silchar. The train journey was a story in itself – no lights, 120km in 6hrs and other miscellaneous events. We had to spend the night at the waiting room in the railway station before getting started on our way to Aizawl.

Notes on Tripura –

  • Unlike in Shillong, we couldn’t find a cheap Bengali food joint (until the last day) and had to manage with paranthas most of the time in Agartala.
  • Although public transport is much cheaper in Agartala than in Shillong, we could not walk our way around the town much because of the extremely enervating weather.
  • We used every possible transport available in Tripura – mini bus, auto rickshaw, cycle rickshaw, big auto rickshaw, jeep, sumo and even a train.
  • Finally bought some Litchis.